Stardogs, page 3
It had been many years since that first contact in the cold showers. Lit was a star-browned fifty year-old man now. He himself had passed the contact on to several other scared newcomers. At the moment the compound was nearly empty. A few riders, and one newling. A thin, haunted looking girl called Una, with hazel eyes too big for her gaunt face. She was a symbol of the underlying problems that the League had with finding new riderfolk. Lit had been twenty when he came into service. She was seventeen. Older riders had told him that the riders used to begin work at twenty-five. The girl would be lifting out with one of them to go to the Stardog that waited for her. There’d be some nasty little League escort of course, and she would be anaesthetized. But at least they would be taking her from the awfulness of riderschool to meet the friend who would make it all bearable.
CHAPTER 2
STATIONERS
There is always something above you. God, or at least a space station
From the collected sayings of Saint Sugahata the reviled.
Life on frontiers tends to be rough, true. But each of the worlds on which the frontiers existed had a tiny enclave of high-technology civilization orbiting above them. The stations had been built in the hey-day of Colonial expansionism. Because the Stardogs and the barges they carried could not make planetary landings they provided an essential stepping stone between planets and space. Yet to maintain and sustain a self-contained environment supporting a few thousand people needed skilled personnel. The people up here saw the world differently from their land-based compatriots. Down there, if one had a strong back one could survive. Here, a sharp, trained mind was needed, because if you did something wrong it wouldn’t just be you who died.
Also, it would have taken a fool not to see that the well-being of the Stardogs and the future of the space stations was inextricably linked. Without the Stardogs man would take years to traverse even the shortest of stellar distances, and the stations would die. Besides, there was something beautiful and majestic about the beasts. By the year 2504 ISPCA membership on all of the 380 stations in the Empire was near universal.
That didn’t mean to say it sat easily with everyone. “I don’t want to go.” It was said sullenly, with all the unhappiness and confusion that the divorce was feeding to the fifteen year-old boy. “I’m too old for ISPCA Youth. It’s boring. Stupid games and endless ‘be kind to our furry friends’ crap.”
“I don’t want to hear you using language like that again, Juan! In front of Betty too. I’m ashamed of you!”
The slight fifteen year-old looked at his pretty blond twenty-three year old step-mother-to-be with resentment she didn’t deserve. She understood him, and even liked the boy better than his present behavior deserved. Also, she felt faintly guilty. Hal and she did use the two hour Youth sessions to catch up on some bottled-up passion. And unlike Juan Biacasta’s father, she wasn’t twenty-five years removed from the confusion of being a teenager. She attempted to jolly him out of his rebellion. “But you like furry creatures, Juan. Why, I bet you’ve got Ratty in your shirt right now.”
Juan blushed fierily, his olive skin darkening. She always did this to him, with her soft curves and soft voice. He’d had rather detailed fantasies about her, before he’d found out she was actually sleeping with his father. Now he was torn three ways, loyalty to his mother, jealousy of his father, and guilt at his own fantasies. “His name is Rat, not Ratty.”
He stormed off, ignoring his father’s demand that he come and apologize. He couldn’t go that far. One couldn’t in the 17 square yards of apartment. Of course, his father, as chief docking controller, was entitled to more, but with his political ambitions he wouldn’t take any more than the minimum. Juan’s own five square yard cubicle was supposedly soundproofed. But that didn’t mean that even through the headphones of his comp-unit he couldn’t hear his father’s angry voice.
Not even the drama he’d Hack-patched into (restricted access, no four to twenty-one) could hold his attention. His eyes drifted from the screen to the various hanging models suspended from the ceiling. The Denaari barge. The Gloria Mundi. An Imperial Chi fighter. A troop-lander. They should come down. None of his friends had kids’ stuff like this in their cubes any more. Somehow he never got around to it. The models stayed, symbols of happier times when his parents had kept the disintegration of their marriage from him. He clicked comp access off. Went out.
“I’m going,” he said sourly to his father, before the man could get a word out edgeways. “But I’m not going to namby-pamby Youth. I’m going to go and see Mother.”
Even as he walked off down the accessway Juan knew it would be a waste of time. He’d said it to hurt his father more than anything else. She wouldn’t be in her new 6.5 square yards of singles apartment. She’d still be in the electronics-lab, peering through a microscope at a circuit. She’d talk to him, sure. But half her mind would still be with her work. He flicked on to the slideway going to low-g. He’d go and mooch around the ball-courts instead. He wouldn’t mind a game, but he didn’t have his racquet or kit, and anyway Rat couldn’t be relied on to stay in his locker.
He was frustrated and angry. He didn’t realize that uncertainty about his return time, and the emotional tensions he’d stirred, had left his father and his father’s girl-friend just as frustrated. Possibly, if he had known he would perhaps have chosen a better time for that silly revengeful practical joke with a tube of superglue from his mother’s lab. She’d brought it for him to fix the piece of Gloria he’d broken off by accident the day before the terminal argument.
The glue had been the final item that had brought the disintegration of his parents’ relationship to an open quarrel. It had led to her abrupt departure, and to Betty’s too sudden appearance. The memory of the glue brought up the idea. He’d like to stick the old man’s mouth shut so he’d stop carping… Of course he wouldn’t actually do something like that, but false teeth…
Which is why the next morning Juan’s father’s roar of rage was through clenched teeth. “That’s it! That is final. You’re not going to Illuria station.”
Juan stopped laughing. “You can’t. You promised!”
“You’re too irresponsible and childish to go. I’m sorry, but you’ve brought this on yourself. If…”
“I will go. You can’t stop me.” The boy stormed back into his cubicle. He sat there angrily on the fold-bed, staring at the forest-scenes on the picture-wall without seeing them. His father could stop him. Travel between stations was mind bogglingly expensive. The stationers managed it with a sort of Quid pro quo with the League. Favors for favors. His father, as Docking Controller, had a lot of leverage. He’d used it for this passage for his son to the cousins at Illuria. Officially, to the Station, the boy was going to learn Astral Navigation, a speciality of the college on Illuria Station, just as Amritsar Station had a reputation for micro-circuitry.
His father gummed angrily as he attempted to lever his teeth apart with a knife. Damn the League. On Kambar Station the bio-research crowd had achieved some truly brilliant results with cloned tooth-buds… But Kambar was something like a hundred and ninety League-ordained jumps away, even if its star was visible from here, and wasn’t actually far as the Stardogs could have flown. Unfortunately, you could ship microcircuits but not tooth-buds.
Hal Biacasta knew he’d shot himself in the foot with this outburst. The boy was a little young to go, and perhaps he wasn’t ideally suited for Nav. His results were good enough, in fact, they were exceptional. Not for the first time Hal wondered if the boy hadn’t damn well finagled the comp-testing system. Juan’s heart didn’t seem to be in Nav., but at that age a boy’s heart was seldom in anything but getting into a girl’s pants, as he remembered it. Juan didn’t appear to be any better at that than he’d been. Well, it had seemed a good idea to get the boy away for a bit, to give his son, as well as himself and Betty a bit of breathing space. That was the problem in a nutshell. The stations were really too small. But there was certainly no Imperial money for expansion, and no stationer ever volunteered to go down to the uncivilized worlds below. No stationer would ever want to.
He was wrong. His son, for example, thought of those rough, brawling worlds in pretty vid-image colored terms. But Juan was not studying the vid-images of the parks on old Earth now. Instead he was staring at the Denaari-barge model, an idea beginning in his rebellious head. Presently he got up and took the model down, and studied it more carefully. It was a perfect scale replica.
CHAPTER 3
THE GOTHA EMPIRE
“The Empire is like a cancer. Should it stop growing, it will die. Peace and stability are the ultimate enemies of imperialism.”
From the collected sayings of Saint Sugahata the reviled.
The People’s Empire of Gotha stretched across light-years. The mind-maps of the great Stardogs had taken men to 432 planets. The Empire held sway over all of them, even if only tenuously on a few like Arunachal. And of course many of the Denaari worlds had been virtually uninhabitable… But even so, the new Emperor, Turabi II, ruled absolute over 300 billion people.
Such power is beyond human understanding. Let us turn instead to a weeping girl who had hidden herself deep in the shrubbery of the vast enclosed imperial gardens of Phillipia, the seat of the Empire. She was nineteen. She had survived just about as many assassination attempts as she had years. This, the last one, an hour and a half ago, had cost her the life of her mother-figure as well as her father and step-mother.
She couldn’t have cared less about her father and step-mother, even if their death had put that horrible little toad, her sixteen year old step-brother Turabi, on the Diamond Throne. The Princess Royal wept instead, bitterly, inconsolably for her peasant-born ex-nurserymaid, who had mothered her, raised her, and finally shielded her beloved charge with her own body. Flecks of Lea’s blood stained her dress. The Princess knew that they were still out there, looking for her. Right now, she almost didn’t care if they found her.
Princess Shari buried her face in the fur of a small dog of dubious parentage. The dog, with canine understanding, allowed this, despite the fact that he was a Dog-of-Immense-Dignity, who believed that cuddling should only be permitted at times and places of its own choosing. The dog growled abruptly. The delicate pale green curtain of hanging Sambar-lilies parted.
Shari looked up. For a moment she thought it was her brother’s crony, Selim Puk. The man had the same almond eyes and dark hair, and moved with same catlike deadly grace. But this man was smaller. And the eyes were a softer brown. “I suppose you’ve come to kill me,” she said calmly.
In his hands the thin garrote-wire gleamed, confirming the truth of this. But he was startled. Hers was not the first life the high-priest of Kali-Dewa had sent him to harvest back into the great cycle. There had been many. But this was the first time he had been greeted thus. “You do not beg or plead?” This was an honorable thing indeed. Surely her rebirth would be a great one.
She shrugged, unafraid now that it had come. “Why? It wouldn’t make any difference. You’ve killed everyone I have ever loved. First Senn. Now my Lea.” She scratched the base of the dog’s ears. “I only have Otto here left. You won’t hurt him, will you?” She gave a tiny sigh, and hugged the mongrel, who turned to lick her nose. “I wonder what will become of him. He was only half-weaned when I found him. I don’t think he knows how to look after himself.” The dog, reassured by the calm tones, jumped off her lap and went to sniff the boots of the killer. Without thinking the man put a hand down to pet it.
“I have killed none of these people, lady. I will not harm your dog. I give my word that I shall find it a suitable home.”
She looked faintly surprised, but patted her thigh, calling Otto back to her. “Thank you. I didn’t expect that from one of Selim’s hatchet-men.”
“I am no one’s hatchet-man, lady. I am the holy executioner of the Kali-Dewa.” He stepped forward, unwinding the garrote.
“How depressing. You’re going to kill me for this ‘Kali-Dewa’ and I don’t even know who he is. I thought you were too pleasant to be one of my late father’s or my brother’s pet murderers.”
She made no move to resist as he skilfully dropped the loop of braided steel wire around her slim white neck. “You are a person of great honor, even if you do not know that the Dewa is always female. Where possible we are instructed to allow the victim a last prayer for their souls to ensure rebirth closer to the Dewa. I grant you this time to make your peace with the Goddess.”
His victim sighed. “I’ve no one to pray for except Otto. Lea and Senn are dead. Kill me if you’re going to. I’m so tired of running and being scared all the time.”
The wire slackened slightly. “You are supposed to pray for yourself, for forgiveness.”
“Why?”
The holy executioner was definitely at a loss now. “Because… well, because of your tyrannical rule of my people, and persecution of the holy church. You are the Duchess of Arunachal, after all.”
His victim began to laugh helplessly. Eventually, interspersed with little hiccups of hysterical laughter, she explained to the puzzled killer, “I’m hiding in the garden from my brother’s assassins. I haven’t a friend in the world besides my dog. I might be an Imperial Princess to you, but believe me, I couldn’t tyrannize anybody. I don’t think I could even order lunch now. I’m the titular head of seventeen planets, and patron of dozens of organizations. You don’t really think that really means anything do you? You don’t think I’m allowed to actually do anything, do you? I don’t even know where half the places are, never mind anything about them!”
“That is a sin itself. You should have found out, done something, gone to your dominions,” said the executioner doubtfully, as the dog sprang off her lap.
She shrugged. “So kill me for it. I haven’t even been able to get out of the palace to save myself, never mind visit my so-called dominions.”
By this stage the holy executioner had forgotten the garrote in his hands. The dog barked and he almost throttled the Princess instinctively. But Otto was barking at someone outside the shrubbery.
“That’s her bloody dog. The girl must be in there somewhere. Selim said we were to finish off the girl and that damn dog of hers.” The voices were close. The girl ignored the garrote, and grabbed the dog who had pressed against her knees. The holy executioner stared in puzzlement as she turned away from the voices and held it her arms. Abruptly he realised that she was trying to shelter the dog from the bullets she expected. Yet, by the fierce look in her eyes she had been prepared to attack the newcomers barehanded to defend the dog, had she not been certain that the animal too would be killed.
It was a moment of epiphany. The executioner dropped his garotte, and, secure in the knowledge that he stood in the presence of a light-incarnation of the Kali-Dewa herself, went forth.
A single, small Aranachali man armed with two ancient fourteen-inch knives should really have been no match for two of Selim Puk’s professional killers. The men were top-graduate assassins trained for two years by the Imperial Security Service.
It was actually no match at all. The Dagger of the Goddess had begun his training when he could barely walk. He had twenty years training to their two. His bloodline too had been honed for many, many generations to this purpose.
She waited. No bullets came. Instead the silence grew. She turned around, unable to wait any longer.
The slight, nondescript man who had held a garrote around her throat, stood there patiently. He was calmly tracing a cross in blood on a long zig-zag bladed knife. Even through the thin film of blood the blade gleamed with endless silky oyster fold patterns. “May they be reborn among the eaters of Denaar-filth.” He wiped the blade carefully on a scrap of cloth which had once been an imperial trooper’s insignia of rank, and slid the blade into its hidden sheath.
He bowed to her. “Your life has been called into the hands of the Kali-Dewa by the high priest on Arunachal, and I am one who is sworn to give it to her for judgment. Yet I see that your work in this incarnation is yet to be done. Accordingly, I must keep your soul within this body until the words of the High Priest Suttulej become truth, and you become indeed the Scourge of Arunachal and the bane of the Holy Church.”
“And if I never do?” she asked with just a ghost of a smile.
He considered the question with gravity. “I shall have to guard you all your life and wait until your last breath. Then I shall part it from you with the holy blade, so that my oath may be fulfilled.”
She shook her head. “You can’t just do that. It’s not that easy. I can’t suddenly just have an extra servant or something, you know. Imperial Security will take you, torture you, and then… kill you.”
“I am already officially part of your retinue, Princess. Or at least the man I have replaced…was.” He allowed himself the shadow of a smile too. “He was also an assassin, and already part of your Imperial Security.”
“You’ll be killed,” she said. “Everyone close to me is.”
He shrugged. “I will surely be reborn closer to the Dewa. Shall we go, Princess? You will be safer in a more public place.”
“What is your name? I can’t just call you … assassin.”
“I have replaced a man called Amadeo Cerros, so that is what you should call me. I was given to the church as a newborn. I have never had an actual name. My title, by which I called, would be difficult for you to pronounce. It simply means ‘Dagger of the Goddess’ among my people,” he said casually. Otto had jumped up against him, and he petted the dog as he spoke.
She reached a decision. “Otto likes you. Let’s go then, if we can. Perhaps you can get us out of here.”
“Is that all you desire, Princess?” Something about the way he asked indicated that he was certain he could get her past the superb security net that enclosed the palace.
